The mobile telephone industry has been associated with tremendous growth over the last several years. Today's mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc.) can be utilized as full-service computing mechanisms. For example, many of the most recent and advanced mobile devices can be associated with word processing software, web browsing software, electronic mail software, accounting software, and various other types of software. In general, applications heretofore available only by way of computing devices and/or Internet protocol (IP) based network devices are now available on such mobile devices. This expansion in capability of mobile devices has largely been effectuated by the recent fixed-mobile convergence.
The rapid growth of the telecommunications industry has fueled a strong competition for market share in mobile-IP communication devices and communication service plans. The growing need for expanded products and services has led to different vendors combining products, services and applications to meet the demands and the timetable of the market. As the complexity of the online mobile system has grown the requirement for maintaining the system and providing vendors and customers enough information to operate and use the mobile system has increased dramatically, the market now requires mobile communications vendors to provide guaranteed levels of performance and availability. Accordingly, a new or evolved service assurance system. Further, the new service assurance system must be capable of spanning the products and services of different vendors without placing an undue implementation burden on any one participant. In this fashion, the new assurance system must be capable of implementation on different system platforms and be able to share information across platforms so this information may be consolidated and reported to the benefit of the mobile system, the vendors and the customers.
As the mobile communication market increases, the number of mobile subscribers increase, and the voice and data demands of such subscribers evolve and become more complex, the support networks provided by legacy voice and next generation data services must evolve as well. To meet this ever growing need, the mobile system must evolve to provide better incident management, problem management, life-cycle management and greater inter-domain coupling and automation. Accordingly, network architectures must adapt as numbers of subscribers and demands of such subscribers increase and evolve.